Youth tends to look at the darker side of things. I confess that my first thought was for Braxton.
I forgave and forgot his faults of manner. Youth is generous. It does not criticise a strong man stricken.
And anon, so habituated was I to the parity of those two strivers, I conceived that there might be some mistake. Daily newspapers are printed in a hurry. Might not ‘Henry Chaplin’ be a typographical error for ‘Stephen Braxton’? I went out and bought another newspaper. But Mr. Chaplin’s name was in that too.
‘Patience!’ I said to myself. ‘Braxton crouches only to spring. He will be at Keeb Hall on Saturday next.’
My mind was free now to dwell with pleasure on Maltby’s great achievement. I thought of writing to congratulate him, but feared this might be in bad taste. I did, however, write asking him to lunch with me. He did not answer my letter. I was, therefore, all the more sorry, next Monday, at not finding ‘and Mr. Stephen Braxton’ in Keeb’s week-end catalogue.
A few days later I met Mr. Hookworth. He mentioned that Stephen Braxton had left town. ‘He has taken,’ said Hookworth, ‘a delightful bungalow on the east coast. He has gone there to WORK.’ He added that he had a great liking for Braxton—‘a man utterly UNSPOILT.’ I inferred that he, too, had written to Maltby and received no answer.
That butterfly did not, however, appear to be hovering from flower to flower in the parterres of rank and fashion. In the daily lists of guests at dinners, receptions, dances, balls, the name of Maltby figured never. Maltby had not caught on.
Presently I heard that he, too, had left town. I gathered that he had gone quite early in June—quite soon after Keeb. Nobody seemed to know where he was. My own theory was that he had taken a delightful bungalow on the west coast, to balance Braxton. Anyhow, the parity of the two strivers was now somewhat re-established.
In point of fact, the disparity had been less than I supposed. While Maltby was at Keeb, there Braxton was also—in a sense.... It was a strange story. I did not hear it at the time. Nobody did. I heard it seventeen years later. I heard it in Lucca.
Little Lucca I found so enchanting that, though I had only a day or two to spare, I stayed there a whole month. I formed the habit of walking, every morning, round that high-pitched path which girdles Lucca, that wide and tree-shaded path from which one looks down over the city wall at the fertile plains beneath Lucca. There were never many people there; but the few who did come came daily, so that I grew to like seeing them and took a mild personal interest in them.